Yeah- OP if you are URM and have a 3.5 and decent MCAT my guess it that MD schools will beg for you.
If you are not URM, considering DO schools is a reasonable thing to do with a 3.5, particularly if you have a <508+ MCAT. Even if you have a higher MCAT and don't want to wait a year it would make sense to apply both MD and DO.
Also, be sure to think about if you are okay with being a DO. Some people are not. These people are commonly advised to re-apply MD if they don't get in the first time, often taking a gap year to strengthen their GPAs (usually through an SMP, sometimes a do-it-yourself (DIY) postbacc (this is just taking undergraduate,
not graduate level courses after you have obtained a bachelor's degree) or retaking the MCAT. An extra year is also commonly used to boost ECs and write better essays for the upcoming cycle.
As for what it means to be a DO: osteopathic programs in general have slightly to significantly lower matriculation averages.
Most MD programs have 3.7+ GPAs with higher MCAT averages (I think it is often around 508+, but I haven't looked at the Medical School Admissions Requirements catalog (MSAR) recently). DO schools average closer to 3.5-3.6, with many newer programs at lower GPA averages. They also accept students with MCATs averaging in the ~55-70%th percentiles most of the time.
DO programs are accredited by a different body (COCA) than MD schools, which ends up meaning they have different standards.
This has manifested in a few ways. Clinical rotations at DO schools can be more hit-or-miss than MD schools. Not always, but they can be. Clinical rotations are also going to have a tendency towards being more preceptor-based (teaching physician without a team of residents or fellows) rotations instead of rotations with the classical hierarchy of medicine (med students under residents under practicing physicians, maybe with fellows around). This apparently has implications for residency placement because residency program directors (PDs) like selecting students who already understand how the hierarchy of medicine works.
DO programs teach you Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM) in addition to all the other basic sciences that you need to learn in the first 2 years of pre clinical training. Some of this is less evidence-based and many consider it more of a dogmatic practice with basis in early practice of osteopathic medicine. I will say that from my research there is some reasonable evidence to support OMM in some contexts. Some forms of OMM do not have a proper evidential basis for their practice. I'm personally looking forward to learning it because it will enable me to give my partner relief from chronic pains. In the end, you go through the training and only have to practice what you are comfortable practicing.
Also, DO programs have lower requirements for research. There is generally less academic research conducted at DO schools. You usually have to put in effort to seek out opportunities. Some specialties like to accept students that have done research during medical school, so this places DOs at a disadvantage for those specialties.
Additionally, DO programs overall send more students into primary care specialties (family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and OB/GYN. Psych, and EM can sometimes be included in this umbrella). This fact may not be secondary to the different body that accredits DO schools, but it is a real tendency. if you know you want a competitive specialty, DO programs have more of an uphill battle to get there.
DOs also face some stigma in academic medicine particularly. It is more difficult (sometimes much more difficult or impossible at upper tiers), but not impossible, for a DO to obtain residencies in competitive academic residencies. if you want to go into academic medicine, DO will close some doors for you. Some programs are considered completely closed to DOs because they have never accepted one.
DOs face some stigma generally, from a subset of the population. I have heard people mention that MD>DO because of lower matriculant stats or criticism of OMM. You will have to answer the question "what is a DO?" to friends, family, and patients throughout your career. Most people do not care at all. Honestly, the vast majority of people
shouldn't care.
What DO does get you is an American physician license and a high-quality medical education. My feeling is that you get to practice as a physician with a DO degree and that makes up for any downsides that you may or may not believe exists in osteopathic medical school.
Newer schools will have lower matriculant statistics, and will generally be unproven in their ability to produce physicians that obtained residencies. These tend to be less preferable than established schools. newer programs include: ACOM, ARCOM, BCOM, NYIT-AR, PCOM-GA, RVU-UT, ICOM (will probably be around by the time you apply). With a GPA of 3.5, you should probably shoot for the public DO schools and established programs. Though in the case of PCOM-GA and RVU-UT, both those programs have established high-quality campuses already producing physicians, so are less risky.
